Former NBA star Gilbert Arenas banned from County Fair for being too good at basketball

dan devine | ball don't lie

Mon, 27 July 2015, 11:15 pm

There haven't been very many fun reasons to bring up the name "Gilbert Arenas" in recent years, so it's nice to get an opportunity to recall the sunnier, lighter side of the open-book personality that made the former Washington Wizards All-Star one of the most popular players of the mid-2000s, courtesy of Gil's Instagram account:

Well, that certainly is a boatload of stuffed animals, Mr. Arenas. Care to explain?

"We just got banned from all the basketball hoops at #orangecountyfair," wrote the donut-hat-bedecked Arenas in the caption of his post. "Every one screamed #theRimsarebent I screamed #hibachi...#ArenasFamily #CountyFairRockstars"

I bet Kevin Durant feels like a real dope right now. Sure, Pop-a-Shot at Dave & Buster's is great, but you could've shut down the county fair instead and walked away with an amount of stuffed animals capable of overrunning an entire family.

As amazing as it would be for the three-time All-Star — who last appeared in the NBA during a late-season stint with the Memphis Grizzlies in 2012 — to have literally gotten the heave-ho from the Orange County Fair as a result of too brilliantly procuring buckets, the veracity of Agent Zero's claim has come into question, according to Jordan Graham of the Orange County Register:

It’s unclear whether Arenas was actually banned or was simply making a joke. OC Fair spokesperson Robin Wachner said she had not heard of anyone being barred from playing a carnival game. [...]

In past years, the fair has allowed attendees to win significant hauls.

In 2013, Costa Mesa resident "Machine-gun Sonny" Mergenthaler won two mountain bikes a night at the BB gun shooting game, often giving his prizes away. The fair allowed him to keep coming back, but the game limited contestants to two bikes per night.

OK, so maybe Gil didn't exactly run afoul of the fuzz who promote law and order on the fairgrounds. So much the better for the kids, though — one can never have too many massive Minions, after all. And, provided this run of form really did result in Arenas dusting off "Hibachi!" — his catchphrase of choice when his jumper was heating up back in his heyday with the Wiz (at least until he started yelling "Quality shots!" as a dig at Kobe Bryant) — and introducing a new generation to that particular exclamation, then so much the better for the rest of us, too. There's nothing wrong with loving that particular part of our shared hoops-Internet past.